The Vanishing of Katharina Linden (37 page)

“He wouldn’t have gone in there if I hadn’t gone in first,” said Stefan. “He said something funny, you know, like ‘I see you have been busy, young man’ or something like that.”

I raised my eyebrows, forgetting that Stefan could hardly make out my face in the dark. It was almost impossible to imagine Herr Düster saying anything like that. Before tonight he had seemed the most taciturn man on the planet. Discovering that he owned an enormous Mercedes with chrome fenders and tail fins had been enough of a surprise. If he had ripped open his shabby old checked shirt to reveal a superhero’s costume underneath I could not have been more amazed.

“He hates kids,” I pointed out dazedly.

Stefan shrugged. For a moment he was silent, then: “He’s gone. Look.” We both peered out through the windshield. The whirling snowflakes seemed to have stopped, and we had a clear view of the dark form of the other car standing out against the luminous white of the snow. There was no sign of Herr Düster or anyone else near it.

“So?” I realized my teeth were starting to chatter again. Now that the engine was no longer running the temperature in the car was dropping and in my wet clothes I was starting to feel seriously chilled.

“So, we get out and look. Or—no.” Stefan broke off suddenly. “You stay here.
I’ll
go. I’ll come back and tell you if I see anything.”

“Why you?”

“Because it’s freezing out there.” He reached out and touched the back of my hand.
“Mensch
, Pia, you’re like a block of ice.”

“It’s the wet,” I said miserably.

“Look, I’ll get out and see if I can find Herr Düster. I’ll shut the door as quickly as I can. You keep the doors and windows shut, OK?” I nodded unhappily.

“Maybe … maybe you should lock the doors as well.”

I didn’t allow myself to think too carefully about that. “All right.”

“I’ll try to be quick.” Stefan opened the door and instantly there was an influx of glacially cold air. I shrank back like a plant wilting under a late frost. The next second the door had closed again, then Stefan moved past the window. A moment later he had gone and I was alone.

A
fter what seemed like half an hour but was probably only ten minutes, I looked at my watch, but it could tell me nothing: water had seeped into the casing and the second hand had stuck at six.

I hugged myself and tried to breathe life into my frozen fingers. The car windows were slowly becoming opaque. I rubbed at them, wincing at the damp cold, but there was no sign of life outside the portholes that I made. I leaned into the front to see whether Herr Düster had left the keys in the ignition, wondering whether I would have the confidence to try starting the engine, but they were gone.

“Hurry up,” I muttered through clenched teeth, shivering. Even assuming that it was Herr Schiller’s car at the bridge, it seemed highly unlikely that Herr Düster and Stefan would bring him back between them, hog-tied and bloody-handed. I was starting to think that we might have done better to take up Herr Düster’s original suggestion and call the police instead. If I had to stay much longer in the car I would actually freeze to death, and add my name to the roll of victims. Immobility was definitely making things worse. If I had been able to stamp my feet or really wheel my arms about, I might have brought life back to my extremities. I looked at my watch again, pointlessly.

Why not get out of the car?
The thought kept hovering around. The idea had its attractions: the temperature was falling inside the car and very soon there would be little advantage in being there. If I climbed out, I could stamp my feet, wave my arms, run up and down if I wanted to. The snow was no longer falling and as far as I could tell there was no wind to flay my freezing legs. If I saw Herr Düster or Stefan I could call to them and tell them that we had to go for help before I died of cold.

There was also a sly thought burgeoning at the back of my mind, that perhaps it might be
me
who played the leading role in the drama; it might be
me
who saw where Herr Schiller had gone, or found a clue in the snow, another furry boot or a dropped hair ribbon. The thought persisted until it was more strident than the fear urging me to stay where I was, in the safety of the car. It was infuriating to be told to sit there while the menfolk went off and performed all the heroics, as though I were not quite as old as Stefan or just as brave. I bit my lip, considering. Then with resolution I slid along the seat and opened the door.

Stepping out into the cold was like hitting a wall. The sheer physical impact of it made me stagger. I stood for a moment with my hand on the door, then I pushed it shut. I must keep moving. I stamped furiously in the snow, trying to bring life back to my feet. My boots were no longer actually sloshing with water, but the lining was all sodden. My jeans felt like cardboard.

I knew this was a bad idea, even without Oma Kristel’s memory hovering at my shoulder like a guardian angel, telling me to get back indoors and drink something hot before I caught my death. I kicked at the snow as though to push the thought away. Frau Kessel, Hilde Koch, my parents, even poor Oma Kristel: they were always telling me what was good for me. Just for once I wanted to strike out, to do something audacious. In truth I wanted it to be
me
who was surrounded by admiring faces back at the school, with everyone begging me to tell them how I’d done it.

Hugging myself against the cold, I followed the others’ footsteps to the other car: Herr Düster’s long narrow ones and Stefan’s short rugged ones. Sometimes Stefan had walked in Herr Düster’s tracks and it was no longer possible to distinguish between them, but when they came to the parked car they parted. Herr Düster seemed to have walked almost
the whole way around it, and to have backtracked several times; I guessed he had been checking the vehicle thoroughly in case anyone was still inside. Afterward he had struck off up the Tal. Stefan appeared to have peeled off Herr Düster’s tracks just before he got to the car, and to have headed uphill toward the woods.

I looked for other tracks. At first I saw nothing, but then I realized I could pick out a third set leading away from the car. These must be Herr Schiller’s, assuming that it really
was
him, and not some innocent person just trying to reach home in the dark. I soon saw why the others had not been able simply to follow them: they curved around and went down toward the river, its waters flowing black and sluggish between slabs of ice.

It was not difficult to understand the reasoning behind it: the fugitive would have some minutes of severe discomfort from his freezing feet and ankles, but the water was not very deep, and it would cover his tracks completely. He might have gone up or down river, and he could have come out on either side.

I looked left and right, but there was no sign of either Herr Düster or Stefan. I looked back at the car. The cold on my damp legs was so intense it felt as though the skin were peeling off. I hugged myself and tried to tuck my chin into the collar of my down jacket. A stifled sob choked its way out of me, but I realized with a mounting sense of desolation that there was no one to hear it. There was nothing for it but to keep moving.

I decided to follow the river, taking a little-used path on the opposite side from the main track. In the summer months the path was overgrown with grass and weeds, but now it was blank and white with snow like everything else.

I set off at the briskest pace I could manage, desperate to pound some warmth back into my limbs. With the snow clouds gone and the pale winter moon shining down, I could see quite well. The wet trunks of the trees that lined the riverbank stood out like dark stripes against the white of the snow. I counted five trees, and then ten. When I had passed twenty I would turn around.

The night was absolutely silent apart from the huffing of my own breath and the crunching of snow underfoot. The woods around Münstereifel
are full of game—deer, hares, foxes—but now there was nothing moving among the bare trees. Glancing behind me I thought the car seemed unimaginably far away. I counted the twentieth tree and stood still, listening.

Somehow the silence was worse than any sound could have been, however threatening. There was an air of expectancy about it. I thought of Unshockable Hans, the intrepid miller, waiting and watching for the spectral cats. The headless ghost of the evildoer, doomed to roam the valley until someone dared speak to him.

Abruptly I stopped short, sucking in a painful breath of glacial air. There were footprints in front of me, footprints that came from the middle of nowhere and started in the middle of the path. The footprints of a man: I could see the marks of heel and toe sharply defined in the crisp snow.

For a moment I held my breath. Then with a surge of relief I exhaled. Of course, the footprints did not
really
start in the middle of nowhere. When I looked properly I could see brown tufts of foliage sticking up through the kicked-over snow where he had come up the riverbank before he stepped onto the path.
Herr Schiller
.

I looked at the path ahead, looked back behind me at the bridge and the cars, then back at the path again.

About fifty meters ahead of me there was a rocky outcrop where the hillside met the level ground, slightly obscuring my view of the path. The black skeletons of shrubs stuck out on it like bristles. As I watched, a yellow glow suddenly bloomed behind the bristles, backlighting them with a pulsing corona of dazzling brightness. I was as shocked as if the world had tilted sideways and sent me sliding about like dice in a cup. My brain simply refused to process what my eyes were seeing. Dumbfounded and rooted to the spot, I watched that eerie light flame upward, gilding the snow with its golden radiance, and then I knew: it was the
Fiery Man of the Hirnberg
.

I think I took a step back, staggering, but I was still unable to run. Wide-eyed and openmouthed, I saw a figure clothed in blinding flame step from behind the outcrop, into the middle of the path, arms outspread as though crucified by the fire that streamed from every limb.

Distantly, I could hear someone screaming.
Stefan?
I dared not turn
my head, as though the blazing thing would swoop upon me with those flaming talons outstretched if I took my horrified eyes off it for an instant. I took another step backward.

The fiery form was coming toward me, it was coming
nearer
, although each step was halting, as though wading through the inferno that surrounded it. I could not feel the heat yet, but I saw the incandescent figure brush against a broken branch and a bundle of desiccated leaves instantly ignited, shriveling and sparking.

Panic forced its way up inside me. I was aware that I was babbling nonsense, but I seemed to have no control over my own voice.
No, no, go away, I didn’t call you, I didn’t, I didn’t
. Terror was expanding inside me, but still I could not run.

Paralyzed with dread, I watched Death close in on me with feet that scorched the bare earth under the snow. I thought I could feel the deadly heat of the blazing hands that were held out to me, as though in supplication. I closed my eyes against the searing brilliance of the fire, fists drawn in tight to my body as though I could somehow shrink into myself and escape the branding heat of that fiery touch. Even through closed eyelids I could see the yellow glare. A sound like a creak escaped from a throat too constricted with fear to scream. I could hear it now, the roaring and crackling.

“Go away,” I whispered, and waited, my eyes still screwed tight shut, my whole body trembling. I waited. Nothing happened. Then suddenly I heard a sound that was ponderous but somehow soft, the muffled sound of a burning bonfire falling in on itself. There was warmth on my legs.

I opened my eyes. The burning figure lay outstretched on the melting snow in front of me, the clawlike left hand almost touching my boot. Flames were still licking over something horribly black and charred. I took a step backward, and then another, and then all of a sudden my paralysis had broken and I was turning to run, run for my life. My breath was painful and ragged. The glacial night air seemed to stab my frozen limbs with a thousand tiny knives. My boots skidded on snow and I almost fell, but righted myself like a galloping colt, my heart pounding as though it would burst. Anything to get away, to put as much distance as possible between myself and the thing I had seen.

I turned to look back, staggered, taking in nothing but a dizzying
slice of starry sky and black branches against snow, and ran slap into something in my path. For several seconds I clawed at it, desperate to get past, shrieking in frustration, and then suddenly I realized I had run into a person. My flailing arms were being held gently but firmly by gloved hands. I felt the rasp of woolen fabric against my cheek. Words were being spoken; in the confusion born of panic I could not take them in, but the effect was calming, as though I were a terrified animal.

I pulled back a little and took in a jacket of the traditional sort, with a stand-up collar and polished horn buttons. It was probably hunter-green but in the moonlight it looked almost black. My eyes traveled upward: the face was deep in shadow underneath a jaunty Tyrolean hat. I sucked in a deep breath.